What is a Compliance Scan?

A compliance scan is an assessment that checks whether systems, applications, endpoints, or infrastructure follow specific security policies, regulatory requirements, or industry standards. Instead of only looking for known vulnerabilities, it checks whether configurations and controls match expected rules.

These scans may compare systems against internal policies, CIS Benchmarks, PCI DSS, HIPAA, or other security baselines. They often review settings such as password rules, access controls, logging, encryption, firewall rules, and patch status.

What Does a Compliance Scan Check?

A compliance scan usually looks at technical controls that can prove whether a system follows a required baseline. Common checks include:

• Configuration settings: Verifies operating system hardening, firewall rules, service settings, and secure defaults.
• Access controls: Checks whether permissions, MFA, and least-privilege rules are properly enforced.
• Password policies: Reviews password complexity, expiry, lockout, and authentication settings.
• Patch compliance: Confirms whether required updates and security patches are installed.
• Audit logs: Checks whether events are logged, retained, and protected from tampering.
• Encryption settings: Verifies whether sensitive data or devices use required encryption controls.

Common Types of Compliance Scans

Different scans may focus on different compliance goals:

What Happens After the Scan?

A scan usually produces a report that shows compliant and non-compliant systems, failed controls, affected assets, and remediation steps. Security and IT teams can use the results to fix gaps, prepare audit evidence, and track progress over time. Some platforms also create template-based compliance reports from scan data.

Endpoint Compliance Visibility with Hexnode

Compliance scans often depend on accurate endpoint data. Hexnode UEM helps IT teams monitor device compliance, enforce security policies, manage apps, and identify endpoints that fall outside required standards.

For example, teams can use Hexnode to check whether devices follow password, encryption, app, and configuration policies. When a device becomes non-compliant, IT teams can take action by applying restrictions, notifying users, or remediating the issue based on policy.